This is a pluralistic festival that includes recent award-winning feature films like A Thief’s Daughter by Belén Funes and The Days to Come by Carlos Marqués-Marcet. It will also include a glance back to the past, since the festival is still partnering with the Filmoteca de Catalunya to share Catalan Film Classics, this year with The Time of the Doves by Francesc Betriú. Famous films like the winner of the 2018 Golden Shell Between Two Waters by Isaki Lacuesta will be shown alongside pictures by emerging talents like the award-winning first films Journey to a Mother’s Room by Celia Rico and Black Eyes by Ivet Castelo and Marta Lallana.

The festival is keeping its commitment to Catalan short films by scheduling a wide range of them, from Irene Moray’s European Film Award winner Watermelon Juice to other titles like Greykey by Enric Ribes, Mercy by Xavier Marrades and Adalamadrina by Carlota Oms. Several films which have recently emerged from universities will also be screened, such as In Between Tracks by Delfina Spratt and Àlex Puig Ros (UAB, Master’s in Theory and Practice of Creative Documentaries) and Tahrib by Gerard Vidal (ESCAC), as well as the first work by director Àlex Monner, An average boy and a leading light Rosario.

The confirmed guests include Celia Rico Clavellino (Journey to a Mother’s Room), Irene Moray (Watermelon Juice) and Ivet Castelo (Black Eyes), who will not only introduce their films but also hold talks at the Edinburgh College of Art and the Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts. Plus, the festival is continuing its intense dialogue with other disciplines, and this year the programming includes the music of Marcel Bagés (from the duo Maria Arnal and Marcel Bagés) and a performance by the Barcelona collective Compartir Dóna Gustet as part of the festival’s calendar.

“The festival is not only a random sampling of Catalan productions, and just like every edition we are looking for connections among the titles chosen. This year, the festival is spotlighting the ‘incredible strength of the nuclear family’, with films on imperfect families and generational succession, plus it is showing a particular interest in titles that play with the boundaries of reality and fiction. We’ll see a real-life father and daughter with Eduard Fernández and Greta Fernández, couples like Maria Rodriguez Soto and David Verdaguer sharing a real pregnancy, and sisters Marta and Julia Lallana as the director and actress of Black Eyes, all of them questioning the screen as a barrier between the real and the fictitious”, says Valverde. 

The special events include open workshops teaching Scottish audiences how to build castells (human towers) or how to prepare the perfect pa amb tomàquet (bread spread with tomato). The concert that Marcel Bagés will offer as part of the festivals Attic Sessions is a particular highlight. Plus, there will be a special night of poetry and music, when the artist Marc Sempere will blend elements from the Scottish and Catalan oral traditions in a paella performance that promises to delight the local audience.

Organised by Cinemaattic – a Scottish collective focusing on promoting Spanish and Latin American films in the United Kingdom – with the backing of the Institut Ramon Llull – the organisation that promotes Catalan language and culture abroad – the fourth edition of the festival is growing and will reach iconic cinemas in Scotland such as the Filmhouse of Edinburgh, the Glasgow Film Theatre, Dundee Contemporary Arts, the Eden Court Theatre of Inverness, the CCA Glasgow and the mythical Cameo in Edinburgh.

The festival is also supported by Acció Cultural Espanyola (AC / E), Film Hub Scotland, the Catalan Centre of Scotland, Filmoteca de Catalunya, Catalan Films & TV, Estrella Damm and Anna de Codorniu.